This Forum Is Wonderful!

[Sale Date in 10 days!]

This forum has truly been helpfully informative. I wish I would have known about (or would have known that I needed to hear your stories before being led into a false sense of security with CW negotiators).

What can I do to stop/postpone the sale date of 5/15/2008? I'm a quadriplegic that desperately needs to keep my accessible home. I have nowhere to go and survive off of the income that my property provides with its two rentals. I've been told different things from each negotiator I talk to.

Here's my story:

We were 3-4 months behind in paying the CW mortgage. When I discovered this, I immediately contacted CW. Initially, my hardship was that I did not know my mother, who unbeknownst to me at the time was experiencing the onset of Alzheimer's, wasn't paying the mortgage. I did not have an automatic lump sum of $18,000 to give them for the arrears. I told them I could get the money though. I also added that meeting the payment was becoming increasingly harder because of the ARM adjust of $650.00 and the economy's effect on sales from our business.

JANUARY 31, 2008
They forwarded me to a Home Loan Retention group (Lancaster office) that advised me that I could pay apply for the loan modification program. I was told that I would pay $3,000 after the documentation would be completed in approximately 10 days. I was told DO NOT SEND THE MONEY NOW.

Over the course of the last three months, I contacted CW several times - each time was assured that I didn't have to worry and NOT TO SEND MONEY.

10 days passed and I received nothing, but was advised not to worry because it took a minimum 30 days to process and because of the backlog, more than likely 30-60 days. I was assured NOT TO WORRY.

I contacted CW anyway during that time because I was getting solicitations from attorneys in the mail telling me I needed their help. CW told me to ignore them and not waste money on lawyers because I was doing myself what they would be doing - negotiating with the loss mitigation department.

MARCH 12, 2008
Contacted CW and discovered that negotiator, Lare Bottka, had finally been assigned on March 9.

APRIL 4, 2008
Contacted CW to find out why negotiator hasn't called me yet. Was informed that our mortgage may have been one of the ones that were mistakenly closed. Within a few days they found it. However, no negotiator had been assigned yet.

APRIL 7, 2008
Contacted CW to determine status. The person that took my call emailed the negotiator to determine what is happening. He gave her my home phone to contact me. She never did.

APRIL 18, 2008
CW told me that my submission for loan mod. was canceled because we had enough money to pay. If we could have been notified earlier, we may have been able to come up with the money, but mostly we could have avoided all the fees accumulated during that waiting time.

To make matters worse, in the past few months, we fell upon even more hardship. These are, however temporary and as soon as my rental unit is habitable, I'll have an additional $2,000 income.

(1) Countrywide's Insurer, Balboa Insurance, lagged six months on releasing the funds to pay for water damage claim on my apartment rental so I lost six months of tenant income; &

(2) my other property rental violated a zoning code and had to leave. As a result, I had less money to set aside for the money for paying the mortgage in arrears. I was told to resubmit another hardship letter to CW to see if we could readjust our interest rate.

APRIL 22, 2008
Provided all of my new financial information for the new submission for loan mod.

APRIL 28, 2008
Received SALE NOTICE of 5/15/2008.

What can I do to stop the sale?
1. CW tells me that I can send in $7,600 by Western Union and that will postpone sale date. Can I trust that they just will apply that so I can get my property out of foreclosure?

2. Can I pay the balance due and stop the sale? It will be difficult, but I think I can find somebody who can borrow me the $$ I need.

3. Can I refinance to a better loan? My property has a lot of equity. The balance due is $382K and a lowball appraisal of my property is $850K. When I've called banks they've told me I cant, because I'm in foreclosure.

4. Balboa Insurance has not released the 2nd property damage claim amount of $7,500. I have a choice of using it to pay the contractor to finish the repairs on my rental unit and make it rentable and income providing OR applying it to my mortgage balance. If I apply it to my mortgage balance, how can I be assured CW would receive it in time so I CW could release the sale date?

5. CW has increased the amount due with extra fees - if I would have been advised that I should pay four months ago, I could have done that instead of holding off sending them the money. I offered to pay and felt that I should at least try to keep up with payments, but was told not to send any money in.

What can I do in the next few days to save my house?

[Moe Bedard]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for joining...........

I am so sorry for the runaround you have been getting from Countrywide.....

I am not sure that they will give a modification with that much equity in your home, unless you are in an adjustable rate mortgage that is also causing a hardship, because it has adjusted, however, given the circumstances for your hardship with your mom not paying the mortgage due to alzheimers you would most likely be able to get a forebearance. That is when they will either capitalize the past due payments and fees into the principle balance and you begin current payments.......or the will take the past due amount and break it up into payments over a set period of time and add it to the current payment moving forward until it is paid up. But since you also have an adjustable rate that just did adjust..........if your household income versus your household expense has a surplus of at least $100-$250 per month then also ask about a modification of the rate back to the teaser rate.......they can do this too. As long as you are able to prove that you can afford the payments moving forward.

Countrywide is a part of Project Lifeline and if you are working with them on a solution to the problem, they do have the ability to put off a foreclosure date by 30 more days while you work with them.

First..... you should contact an attorney ASAP for you and the attorneys listed for CW and tell them that you are working on a forebearance/modification plan with CW and see what they can do about the sale date.

Second.... you need to put in the body of an email your hardship letter and an explanation of everything you have been through with Countrywide and you need to email it to each of the email addresses I have provided below including the new media. You should receive a response within 48 hours in which case you will have someone of the utmost importance to speak with and tell your story to.

I hope this helps you...........
Please keep us posted on your progress.......


customer_service@countrywide.com
pressroom@countrywide.com
david_bigelow@countrywide.com
angelo_mozilo@countrywide.com
lisa_riordan@countrywide.com
elizabeth_moyer@countrywide.com
sarah_perek@countrywide.com
chris_oltmann@countrywide.com
Chris Oltmann
SVP, Treasury Finance
818-225-3275 Office
818-324-4116 Cell

vice_president@whitehouse.gov
OCIP@do.treas.gov
service@naca.com

Email Hardship to these News Emails:

Dateline@NBCUNI.com
Nightly@NBC.com
Today@NBCUNI.com
WebEditors@newsweek.com
__________________

[Sale Date in 10 days!]

Thank you Cat. I've emailed everyone on the list.

[Moe Bedard]

I know you did..........you caught my email too.........

I do hope it all works out for you.........

Please keep us updated when you hear back........

[Moe Bedard]

This is a very serious situation and you really need an attorney right away to assist you in dealing with Countrywide and the attorney. You also need the ability to pay your mortgage.

Remember this is loss mitigation for Countrywide and it is business. They evaluate each case on how much loss they will incur if they are not to give you a loan modification and in this case, they would gain by not working with you because you have so much equity.

Have you had your loan documents reviewed by an expert?

[ProfessorShays]

Given your equity position it is absolutely essential that you contact an attorney ASAP.

Daniel

[Sale Date in 10 days!]

A few days ago I discovered this forum when I had less than 2 weeks before the sale date of my property. Thanks to the advice discussed, I learned some very important things that I wish I would have known 3 months ago when I was 1st given notice that I was in default.

I took the advice given by CAT and emailed everybody on the list on Sunday night that is posted in various threads. Monday morning, I received two different calls from the Office of the President and a couple of emails from others on the list. My loan has been given priority and the attention it needs.

I'm sad for some of the posts where they didn't take the same advice of emailing that list to get the attention they needed, because it really did work.

While the sale date in 9 days is not yet dropped, I do know that Countrywide is seriously looking at finding a solution. Unfortunately, the balance now due to take my loan out of default has increased from $17,000 to at minimum $38,000 (maybe even closer to $60,000 - still waiting for the Reinstatement Balance).

I believe this to be very unfair and could have been avoided because I believed that CW Home Retention Department was there to help me and accepted their advice to pay $3,000 and apply the remainder of the $17,000 to the end of my loan to lighten the load of the payments.

What I didn't understand until I read the posts in this forum was that:

• HOME RETENTION is just a deceiving name for debt collector.

• HOPE is the program for loss mitigation and loan modification, not HOME RETENTION.

• HOME RETENTION gets your information to a NEGOTIATOR to review your financial information to determine whether your might be able to receive negotiator assistance in the HOPE program.

I hope word can be spread around for people not to have a false sense of security when they are connected with this department.

As a result of HOME RETENTION assuring that everything was fine with my case for three months:

• The clock was ticking on my sale date.
• Fees were accumulating. Each day I call, it seems that another $1,000 in fees has been added to my loan.
• CW paid 3-4 years of back taxes which, in my case, were exempt because I am low income and disabled with quadriplegia. I have the option to pay them when I sell the property or before if I'm able.
• I'm being charged for all the legal fees involved; the Title charges; the appraisal; etc.

These fees and taxes could have been avoided.

• The HOME RETENTION department had my financial information that showed we had $17,000 to pay the balance to take it out of default.
• If HOME RETENTION would have assigned a negotiator to me within the 10 days they initially promised instead of 2.5 months later.
• If HOME RETENTION would not have represented to me that they were doing everything they could to help me.
• If CW could have kept me apprised of the fees that were accumulating or that they were paying my back taxes.

How can I be prevented from paying the additional fees accrued, the appraisal and other fees that were incurred by CW as a result of the deception of false sense of security and negligence of the HOME RETENTION department for not reviewing my case sooner so I could have taken my loan out of default when it was $17,000?

Now I don't have enough money and if no loan modification is granted, I really will have lost my handicapped modified home and property that provides me with the rental income I use for survival & to pay my mortgage.

Has the media exposed or made clear to the community that HOME RETENTION is not a warm fuzzy department meant to assist you, but a debt collector?

[Moe Bedard]

I hope you have a good outcome...........

Please keep us posted on how it goes.........

[Moe Bedard]

Sale Date in 10 days. I loved your post so much, I reposed it on my blog that gets 30,000 visitors plus a month. These stories need to be exposed and thanks for letting your feeling and the truth shine in your words.

Moe has exposed this on many occasions on his blog and here on the forum

Keep up the fight!